


Setting Fire to Our Insides for Fun

by hoteldestiel



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Multi, The Library, Welters Challenge 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 06:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18633076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoteldestiel/pseuds/hoteldestiel
Summary: “What's the point of the new Library World Order if you can't even fucking use it for anything good?"Alice fixed Eliot with an icy glare. Eliot didn't flinch."I'm not restricting your access, Eliot. I'm just saying, I don't - I don't think the answers are in these books."Eliot rolled his eyes. He was so sick of coming up answerless. He was so sick of the things he loved getting ripped away from him. There was a hollow inside of him that he wasn't sure would ever go away, now, but he needed to do something, anything to help the one singular fucking thing he felt like might be within his actual grasp to do something about.





	Setting Fire to Our Insides for Fun

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first season watching the show in real-time. And holy shit I picked a doozy to join in on. I was worried that the fandom was going to disintegrate after that finale, but it didn't. We're all broken in our own ways and we're all working through what it is to mourn Quentin Coldwater and deal with the surrounding circumstances, but I've been so inspired by the way the fandom has banded together. Seeing the Welter's Challenge still happening made me so happy. So often, I feel like Alexander Hamilton in that my way of getting through things is to "write my way out." This was my first step toward that. 
> 
> I don't agree with the way the finale went down, but I believe that Quentin Coldwater stepped through that door and into an entire multiverse of new stories, and it's our job to create them. So, this is my first attempt at contributing to the non-ending he deserves. 
> 
> Anyway, massive emotional soliloquy aside, this piece explores Eliot and Alice's friendship in their shared grief, and their shared, if different, determination. And of course, because of the first Welter's theme, The Library plays an important role. I wanted to take a closer look at how Alice has helped shape and change The Library in her tenure as Head Librarian. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Major thanks to theprincessandthepie for betaing this and helping me whip it into shape. This piece would definitely not be seeing the light of day without your help, so thank you thank you thank you.

“What's the point of the new Library World Order if you can't even fucking use it for anything good?" 

 

Alice fixed Eliot with an icy glare. Eliot didn't flinch. 

 

"I'm not restricting your access, Eliot. I'm just saying, I don't - I don't think the answers are in these books." 

 

Eliot rolled his eyes. He was so sick of coming up answerless. He was so sick of the things he loved getting ripped away from him. There was a hollow inside of him that he wasn't sure would ever go away, now, but he needed to do something, anything to help the one singular fucking thing he felt like might be within his actual grasp to do something about. 

 

"You're telling me that in the whole godforsaken repository of all magical knowledge in the multiverse, there's nothing about time shifts? On time magic? Because we've fucked with it more than once, and I'm not buying that." 

 

Alice shifted behind the desk, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. A small, frustrated noise came from the back of her throat. Eliot shifted, leaning his weight onto the cane he'd been bullied by Margo into using since his surgery. She pushed through the pages of a massive book in front of her, eyes scanning the page with wild ferocity, her mouth twisting in a determined fashion. 

 

"Let's not forget how brilliantly that went for us the last time," she muttered without taking her eyes off the page, "Magic is still fucking dangerous, El." 

 

"Don't I know," Eliot said, his voice cold. 

 

It wasn't fair, he knew that. It would never be fair, to take his anger out on Alice like this. She was the only person who might actually understand what he was going through here. Which was exactly why he couldn't meet her gaze. 

 

"Are you ever going to stop that?" Alice asked, hands stilling. 

 

"Trying to get Fillory back from the hands of this Dark King fuckwad? No, absolutely not." 

 

"Blaming yourself." 

 

Eliot laughed, cold and hollow, eyes still firmly affixed to the desk in front of him. 

 

The last time he'd laughed with any warmth was in another time and place. One he couldn't get back. 

 

"What's the book got to say?" he said, pushing through the hollow ache. He could feel Alice staring at him, could picture the sharp way she was looking right through him. He loved her for trying. He couldn't accept it. 

 

"Just, okay, follow me," she said, stepping out from behind the desk and leading him through the massive maze that was the Library. 

 

Alice had only been in charge a few short weeks, but the place was already drastically different. Where before the authoritarianism oozed from every shelf, every bland gray suit, now there was a certain brightness to the place. Eliot wasn't sure if that was a reflection of the change in dress code, lighting, or purpose. 

 

Whatever the cause, he was impressed. They wound through aisles and he caught glimpses of hedge tattoos on the arms of magicians, hungry eyes taking in knowledge that had never before been free to them. 

 

The Library had always struck him as something sterile: a cold, heartless place with knowledge and no passion behind it. The only thing he'd ever seen Zelda or the other librarian asshats he'd come across get passionate about was elitism, protecting their knowledge and refusing to share it. Now, it felt warmer, welcoming. Maybe it was the influx of magic. All air, everywhere felt more electric than it had in years, maybe more than it ever had. But Eliot thought it probably had something to do with breaking the chains. 

 

"You're letting hedges in here now, huh?" Eliot asked as they turned another corner. 

 

"It's a provisional program," Alice explained, "I'm still not sure how I feel about it but-" 

 

"It's what Q would have wanted." 

 

"I don't know," Alice admitted, her voice cracking in a way that added another drop to the pool of misery filling his chest. "I don't know if he'd have wanted magic to continue existing at all, anymore. After everything it did. But if he did, yeah, I think this is what he would have wanted." 

 

They continued their walk in silence for a while, until Alice finally came to a halt. Eliot's eyes scanned the spines of the books in front of them and realized, quickly, they were all on Fillory. Not time magic. Not the Great Reservoir Dumping of 2019. Fillory. 

 

"Look, Eliot," Alice said, and the tone of her voice had him shaking his head before she could go any further. 

 

"No," he said. "We're not talking about it." 

 

For a moment, she looked painfully uncomfortable, pleading, almost. Then she turned her eyes back to the books with a curt nod. 

 

"Right."

 

She pointed to a book out of her reach, and Eliot grabbed for it, wincing at the ache that still echoed in his ribs. He turned it over and blanched when he saw the cover.  _ Fillory and Further: The Magicians  _

 

"What the fuck?" he asked, steeling himself against the burning sensation in his chest. 

 

"I know," Alice said, voice small, "But they must have found the manuscript - the one Penny threw out. And the thing is, it doesn't stop. It keeps going. I checked the records, it's been pulled for amendments and re-shelving 18 times in the last two weeks. But it's the only one. None of the other books on Fillory have been pulled even once." 

 

"Does it have anything on the freedom fighters?" Eliot asked. 

 

Alice shrugged a little. "I don't know. We should - let's take it back to my office. Honestly, El, you shouldn't be standing this long." 

 

"I'm inclined to argue with you mostly because that's sort of our  _ thing _ lately," Eliot said with another hollow laugh, "But my entire torso does feel distinctly like it's been put through a taffy stretcher, so, yeah, let's do that." 

 

*****

 

Three hours later, Eliot shut the bizarre book, leaning back in the plush, dark leather chair he had called dibs on and sighed, pushing it away from him. 

 

"That's pretty up-to-the-minute," Eliot agreed, "But it doesn't really give us any answers." 

 

Alice pulled the book closer to her and handed Eliot a couple of pills. 

 

"Bless the painkiller gods," he said, tossing them back and draining the glass of water she'd set beside him to wash them down, "And their blonde minion." 

 

"Why don't you have them heal you?" Alice asked, ignoring the minion comment, "We've got magic back, almost too much of it, really. It would be easy." 

 

Setting the empty glass back on the table, Eliot looked down at his hands in his lap. 

 

"I'll look into it," he said. He wouldn't. But he'd always been exceptionally skilled at shutting down a conversation he didn't want to have. 

 

The silence stretched between them. Eliot ran a thumb slowly over the top of his cane, over the ram's horns, closing his eyes at the sensory memory.  _ I was afraid.  _ He let out a shaky breath. 

 

"I think you're wrong," Alice said. 

 

"I'm sorry, what?" 

 

"Oh," she said, as though she hadn't realized she'd said it aloud, "I just meant, about there not being any answers here. I think you're wrong." 

 

"Enlighten me," Eliot said, leaning his head against the back of the chair and squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the painkillers to work their magic. 

 

"Well, I'll admit, it's not as detailed about the time jump as I would like it to be, but the jump is recorded in here, and there's a weird stutter space in between," she explained, squinting at the page as if the answer was between the letters somehow. 

 

"Stutter space?" 

 

"Yeah," Alice continued, working over the explanation as it poured out of her, "It's like, something skipped ahead in a way where it couldn't be recorded right, but they tried? It's like a....fold, kind of." 

 

"I know you're not about to go all  _ Wrinkle in Time  _ on me here. I see no Oprah, no Reese Witherspoon. Sure as shit no plucky teens looking for their beloved, missing father," he said, pulling his head up and opening his eyes begrudgingly. 

 

"No, no, I know," Alice waved him off, "It's not like that I just, it coincides, I think, with the reservoir being drained, when Everett -" 

 

The abrupt stop aligned with the several beats his heart skipped. He hated that he knew exactly where that sentence went next; when Everett broke the mirror, and any chance Eliot had at fulfilling his promise of being brave with it. 

 

Another small frustrated noise slipped from Alice's lips. "Oh, shit," she said, heading for the door, "I'll be right back." 

 

Eliot grabbed his cane and stood, with a shift in weight he quickly covered up, from the chair. "No, hell no. I'm coming with." 

 

Alice hesitated, but eventually conceded, pointing to the  _ Fillory and Further  _ book on her desk. "Grab that, then." 

 

About half an hour later, Eliot understood why Alice had planned to go without him, first. They still hadn't stopped at a shelf or even a row of shelves. Alice kept walking purposefully in one direction then another, taking every turn like she'd committed the entire map of the Library to her memory in the short time she'd been Head Librarian. Knowing her, she had. 

 

His steps started to fall heavier, along with his cane against the stone floor, but he refused to complain. Eliot would never admit it, but he had a theory. A thin, barely operational theory, but a theory nonetheless. The time fuckery in Fillory hadn't happened until after Quentin's - Eliot took a shuddering breath before continuing his train of thought. If they could find the key to one clusterfuck, maybe they could start unraveling the other. That vague, ephemeral thought, almost but not quite hope, was the only thing that got him out of bed, some days.

 

He hated the worry in Margo's eyes on the days when it couldn't, when he refused to move or look anyone in the eyes, when he turned his nose up at even Josh's most delectable creations and only wanted to be alone. He hated that after nearly a year of worrying about him, fighting to save him, she was in the same position all over again. But he couldn't make it stop, either. Truth be told, visiting Alice here, alone, had been as much a chance to get away from the pity and the sorrow as it had a shot in the dark at putting together some sort of plan. 

 

"Jesus, did this place actually get bigger?" Eliot asked, as they continued their trek. He did  _ not  _ remember this many bookshelves when Zelda was in charge. 

 

"It did," Alice said simply, tugging on the sleeves of her marigold sweater. 

 

Of all the things Eliot expected Alice Quinn to bring to The Library, color was the lowest on the totem pole, but he had to admit, it suited her, and it made a world of difference in the endless stacks of books. The whole place was warmer, somehow, despite there being no tangible shift in lighting fixtures or bulb choice. It was brighter from the inside, somehow. 

 

Eliot remembered, with a dropped breath, the months Alice spent as a niffin, and he wondered if some of these new volumes were dictated by her and only her. He wondered how much of that part of her still existed in her mind, in her soul. He wondered, vaguely, if that other life was still as much a part of her as his life spent working on the mosaic was still a part of him. He hoped not. At least his lifetime of memories had some sweet mixed in with the bitter. Knowing what Alice had done as a Niffin, even a tiny slice of it, and knowing the universe-sized guilty conscience she liked to carry around as a result, he hoped she found a way to leave most of that behind. 

 

"A lot of it happened when magic surged back, the author's room kind of....kicked into overdrive," she said, "We actually lost a couple of Librarians when it first happened. Magic Typewriter-related casualties." 

 

"Did you....?" Eliot asked, unable to stop himself. There were a world of questions he couldn't bring himself to ask, ones that sat deep and dark in his heart, ones that made his bones rattle with the fear of already knowing the answers, so when he found a curiosity that didn't feel like it was threatening to rip him to shreds from the inside out, his filter for socially acceptable conversation topics disappeared entirely. 

 

"A few, yes," she admitted, and Eliot's eyes softened. Some part of his heart softened for her, too. 

 

"From -" 

 

"You got to say we weren't talking about something earlier, I'm saying the same now. Besides, we're almost there," she said, staring straight ahead and waving for him to follow closer. 

 

He tried to pick up the pace but still fell a few strides behind. He really only had the length of his legs to thank for managing to stay as close as he had for as long as he had. Alice Quinn on a mission walked with almost superhuman speed. He almost wondered if she'd spelled herself to go faster. He wouldn't have missed the incantation. Probably. Maybe. He hadn't exactly been at his most observant as of late. 

 

"Here!" She said, skidding to a stop as Eliot hobbled up next to her. 

 

"Is that -?" Eliot asked and Alice nodded, leaning up onto her tiptoes to reach the volume. 

 

"Everett's book," she confirmed. She tucked it under her arm and walked a little further down. 

 

"What, more walking?" 

 

"We need one more," she said solemnly. 

 

Eliot's blood ran cold.  _ No. Abso-fucking-lutely not.  _ He wanted to scream. He could barely breathe. 

 

She continued, each step echoing in Eliot's ears like a hammer to the final nail in the coffin he'd been slowly building for weeks. Finally, when he thought the sound of her retreating steps was going to drive him completely mad, she stopped. He heard her turn back around more than he saw it. 

 

"Eliot, we need to move fast, here." 

 

"You can't be serious," he said, shaking his head because no other part of his aching body would respond to the dread infiltrating his system. 

 

"El, look," she said carefully. 

 

"No! We're not fucking doing that," he shouted, the words bursting out of him before he had a chance to temper the heat behind them. 

 

"Do you think I want to? I've been running this place for weeks and even just  _ knowing  _ that it's here, it makes me sick. But that  _ Fillory and Further  _ book doesn't mention a single thing about the reservoir being drained, it doesn't say anything about Quentin and I drinking from it. There are pieces  _ missing _ , and we need those pieces." 

 

"There has to be another way," Eliot pleaded, bile rising hot in his throat. 

 

Alice flexed her hands in and out of fists at her side, the back of her jaw tensed. She stared at him like she might laser a hole right through him. He kind of wished she would. "If there were, we wouldn't be doing this." 

 

"I can't." 

 

"Well, neither can I, obviously. But maybe, together, we can," she said, casting her eyes down. It caught him off guard, the sudden uncertainty in her voice. It was all too easy for him to forget that she'd loved him, too. He nodded and followed. 

 

"I know what you're trying to do," Alice said when, five minutes later, her pace slowed until they were stopped, neither of them willing to turn to face the spines of the books in front of them. 

 

"Stop the Dark King? Yeah, I thought I made that pretty clear," Eliot said stubbornly. 

 

"Trying to figure out the time jump, unraveling one of the problems, hoping it leads to the other," Alice said. 

 

"It's not like that," Eliot retorted, but his knuckles went white around the ram's head of his cane. 

 

"It's actually kind of brilliant. I wish I'd have thought about it sooner, tying the two together. They seemed so disparate, but now, I don't know, maybe he was always kind of tied to Fillory, more than any of us realized." 

 

Eliot hated how much sense that made. That the two non-Margo shaped things that had eternally transformed him were intrinsically tied, and irrevocably fucked.

 

"Fine, let's just get it over with, then," he said after they spent another long beat staring at each other in silence. 

 

Alice inhaled, the sound rattling out of her and nodded. Eliot reached his free hand out, grabbing Alice's and squeezing when she tensed at the touch. Just like she had at the bonfire, he twined their fingers together, and they turned, in unison, eyes scanning the spines until - he closed his eyes at the exact moment he heard a small hurt sound escape Alice's lips. She reached out, ripping the book from the shelf and pulling it to her chest. Eliot felt nothing but a hollow, roaring ache where his heart should have been. 

 

Alice tugged them to the end of the hall where a small table sat (another one of the many improvements Alice had made), and helped Eliot into one of the chairs before depositing the books on the table and sitting across from him, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand. Eliot steeled himself again. It felt like the millionth time, since that night. The force required to face every new part of living life without him had become the only constant in Eliot's life. Steeling himself was a habit, now, something as common to him as his measured wit or carefully constructed appearance. It was a necessity, for survival. He leaned forward, ignoring the twinge in his healing wound, and gently caressed the cover of the book with his fingertips.  _ Quentin Coldwater.  _ Jesus, he didn't know if he could do this. Alice's hand covered the one of his that had fallen slack on the table, and he looked up. When their eyes met this time, they reflected one another's more than Eliot remembered was possible. They were both holding back tears, and so clearly determined to win the fight against the crushing emotion. They were both, he realized, trying to be brave. 

 

"Alice," Eliot said, her name a sorrowful, pleading whisper on his lips. 

 

They both stared at Eliot's fingers tracing a ceaseless pattern over the elaborately calligraphed "Q." Eliot tried not to think about the way he could hear Quentin rambling about the origin of that particular kind of calligraphy and how it was actually really interesting, because back when it was first invented.....it shattered his heart, knowing that those memories, the ability to hear him so clearly would fade, with time. 

 

Eventually, Alice nodded and pulled Quentin's book in front of her as Eliot pulled his hand back, dragging Everett's in front of him. He had half a mind to stab the pointy end of his cane right through this goddamn book. Everett's life didn't deserve to be recorded. Not when he was the reason. With one hand, Alice flipped Quentin's book open, toward the end. With the other, she squeezed Eliot's. He squeezed back. 

 

Tears welled in her eyes again. This time, they spilled over, and Eliot had to look away.

 

"Oh my god," Alice said after a moment. She pulled her hand from Eliot's and smacked the back of it several times, quickly. "Oh my god, Eliot!" 

 

Eliot's eyes snapped up. Something in her voice had him reaching desperately for his cane, walking to her side of the table. "What? What?!" 

 

"His book," Alice said, "It's not -" 

 

She tilted the book so he could see. The pounding of his heart against his ribs nearly ruined his ability to concentrate as his eyes scanned over the final lines on the page.  _ He stepped through the door, completely unsure of what the Next Big Adventure would look like. When he was through the frame, Quentin had to blink several times against the harsh sunlight. It seemed to be coming from two different directions. The multi-directional rays were familiar to Quentin, but it took him too long to place it. The fresh, sweet smell of wildflowers, the quiet humming buzz of insects that were, if he was hearing correctly, speaking Lorian to one another. Fillory. He'd stepped through the door and into...Fillory.  _

 

"What the fuck," Eliot said, clutching Alice's shoulder. 

 

"Wherever those 300 years went, El, I think..." 

 

"Q's in the fold." 

 

Alice nodded, frantic, her eyes shining. He could feel his shining, too. 

 

"Alice Quinn, you better get your ass out of that chair and hug me right this fucking second, you glorious Head Librarian you." 

 

"We can save him," she said, nodding as she pushed the chair back and stood on her tiptoes, throwing her arms around his shoulders. 

 

"We  _ will  _ save him," Eliot insisted, choking out a sob as he felt something bright expanding in his chest. For the first time in weeks - hope. "I never thought I'd say this, but thank fuck for the Library." 

 


End file.
